An Asset Protection Trust Is Like A Cloak Of Invisibility For Your House

A house that stays in the same family for generations is not just a source of financial stability; it is also a focus of family togetherness. What could be a better place to spend the holidays than the house where one of your grandparents was born, and where your family continues to gather long after the ancestor who bought the house or built it from the ground up is gone? Yes, houses have great resale value. Everywhere you look, there are people who have never owned the house where they lived; for them, worrying about what will happen to your house after you die sounds like a humblebrag, much like worrying about what will happen to your yacht after you die. Meanwhile, for people who are truly wealthy, real estate properties are easy come, easy go. Rich people don’t need to inherit their parents’ house because they already own multiple houses of their own. This does not change the fact that, for many Americans, the best hope of long-term financial stability is inheriting a house from a family member who retired from a salaried job; perhaps this category includes your own children. If you don’t have much, but after you are gone, you want it to go to your children instead of to creditors, contact a Tampa estate planning lawyer.

Be Very Afraid of Medicaid Asset Protection

You have won the game of estate planning if you own your house and you have long-term care insurance or some similar type of insurance. This way, your insurance will pay for your assisted living or nursing home care, and your family can inherit your house after you die. If you don’t have insurance with long-term care benefits, and you are already retired, it is probably too late to qualify for an insurance policy that will pay for all your long-term care expenses. This means that, if you run out of savings when you are in a nursing home, the only way to pay is to sell your house or apply for Medicaid. If you choose Medicaid, it will pay for as much nursing home care as you need, but after you die, it will file a hefty claim against your estate to pay itself back, and this may force your estate to sell your house during probate.

If Your Family Home Isn’t In Your Estate, Then Where Is It?

The best solution to this problem is to prevent your house from becoming part of your estate. You can make your house a non-probate asset by establishing a trust and transferring the deed of your house to the trust. This way, the trust will own the house, instead of you. You can specify in the provisions of the trust instrument how the house should pass to your heirs, but the probate court will not be part of the process.

Contact David Toback About Keeping Your House Out of Probate

A Central Florida estate planning lawyer can help you establish a real estate trust, even if your real estate empire consists solely of your family home.  Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.

Source:

cnb.com/private-banking/insights/transfer-property-into-a-trust.html